Month: September 2006

Derek Slater from the EFF (via Boing Boing):

“We’ve got 24 hours to stop the NSA wiretapping bills in the Senate and let cases like EFF’s lawsuit against AT&T proceed in the traditional court system. Worse still, now some of your Congressional representatives are trying to sneak a dangerous surveillance proposal into the Port Security Bill. If your representative is on the list in this post, call them IMMEDIATELY to oppose the NSA spying program.

“The amendment is so bad, I’ll let it speak for itself: “no action, claim, or proceeding shall lie or be maintained in any court … against any person for an activity arising from or relating to the provision to an element of the intelligence community of any information … in connection with any alleged communications intelligence program that the Attorney General or a designee of the Attorney General certifies, in a manner consistent with the protection of State secrets, is, was, or would be intended to protect the United States from a terrorist attack. This section shall apply to all actions, claims, or proceedings pending on or after the effective date of this Act.”

In the interest of completeness and our ongoing coverage of goofball USB gadgets, we bring you the USB Kitty Sentinel. It may look like a cute cookie jar on grandma’s kitchen counter, but USB Kitty Sentinel is SO much more unsettling than that. Armed with several infrared motion sensors, it can detect when an “intruder” has entered your geekosphere. Once its sensors are tripped, USB Kitty goes on the feline warpath, shaking its shiny little faux ceramic head, and hissing and sputtering, scaring off whoever’s been pokin’ around your stuff. Of course, if they run away screaming, it’s probably because they think you’ve finally gone off the deep end and they’re rushing off to alert building security (or the company nurse).